Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican, will head the House Intelligence Committee, replacing Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who has been nominated to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert announced. Hastert said Hoekstra was a good choice to lead the panel as Congress moved to act on overhauling U.S. intelligence agencies following a critical report by the Sept. 11 commission, which investigated the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

An intelligence officer told a Senate panel that the acting Energy secretary last year kept him from briefing Congress on an alleged case of Chinese espionage because she said it would harm the administration's China policy. Notra Trulock, a senior Energy Department intelligence advisor, said he was blocked last July from answering a request from the House Intelligence Committee for a briefing on an alleged case of spying at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1980s.

Let me see if I can get this straight: Biden, the Democratic chairman of the committee, has recently admitted to plagiarism in law school; committee member Kennedy was penalized for cheating in law school, and committee member Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), was forced to resign his position on the House Intelligence Committee for leaking information to the press. On the opposite side, there is Bork, former solicitor general, law professor and federal judge, none of whose opinions has been overturned by the Supreme Court.

Re "Pelosi-Harman friction strains Democrats' unity," Nov. 21 If incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were a patriot instead of a politician, she would set aside her personal animosities and appoint Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) as chairwoman of the vital Intelligence Committee. Harman, as everyone acknowledges, is far and away the most qualified Democrat. That Pelosi's other consideration in this essential matter is meeting racial quotas for blacks and Latinos makes her posture all the more egregious.

Six Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told lawmakers that the agency had misled Congress since 2001 about "significant actions." In a letter to Panetta, the six legislators said he had "recently" testified that "top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress" and "misled members" from 2001 until this week. The letter, released by the lawmakers, didn't describe what actions were at issue. The agency went to the panel with the new information, CIA spokesman George Little said in a statement.

For your editorial of April 7 to lament only the internal communication problems within the CIA along with its communication problem with members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees really misses the point. Not adequately reported is the really big story. What is it about our policy that for years allows the U.S. government to give aid via the CIA or otherwise to a Guatemalan government that is at war with the majority of its population who are poverty-stricken, a vast number of whom are native Mayan Indians, causing fatalities numbering more than a 100,000 and causing hundreds of thousands more to migrate to the United States as political and economic refugees.

Re "Officials Debate Spy Czar Plan," Aug. 11: It is disconcerting to me that the decision-makers are focusing so much of the debate on whether or not centralizing the intelligence community is the best remedy for our national intelligence breakdowns. I fear that this more bureaucratic "fix" will not address the cultural issues that are fundamental and foundational (e.g., more open communication, more decentralized decision-making, quicker response time, shared responsibilities). If defense and effectively addressing the terrorist issues are indeed a high priority, I would like to see equal time given to deciding on ways to fix the cultural issues that have plagued our intelligence community for years.

The House Intelligence and Armed Services committees each took steps this week that reflected continued congressional concern that the Pentagon's influence over U.S. spying operations could be eroded by the nation's new intelligence director. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee endorsed legislation to curb newly installed National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte's ability to transfer personnel from one spy agency to another.